Now I Don't
by Eve Levine
Summary: Opie in the car at the end of season 3. One-shot.


_A.N- All of these characters belong to Kurt Sutter. I own none of them. However, it's almost embarrassing how much I love Opie, and his face in this scene broke my heart. In the good way, of course. :)_

* * *

><p>"<em>This is what she felt".<em>

There's red mist on his lips, it's blood, her blood. He doesn't expect the blowback, the fine spray on his face. He's never shot anyone this close before. He's a good shot, but he's the explosives guy. He's taken out as many as twelve with one press of his thumb, but he doesn't usually do up close. Tig does up close.

It was an odd moment when he cornered Tig behind the bar, put his hand on Tig's chest, and asked him for the gun he used to kill Donna. Tig doesn't let himself get cornered, would have broken the fingers of any other man, but Opie has some pull with Tig now. He wouldn't meet Opie's eyes when he admitted the gun was long gone. Opie curled his hand around the collar of Tig's kutte and asked him to get another one. Told him he wanted it for Stahl.

"Anything you need brother," Tig said and Opie watched as relief and something like grief swam behind Tig's eyes.

Grief can be funny sometimes. Not that Opie has anybody he talks to about his grief. He can't predict what things will crush him and steal his breath. Like he and Donna never found their way back to center. He hates they didn't have the time they needed after he got out of Chino to enjoy the good parts in their marriage. And her face as he saw it last sits over his heart, haunting him. His woman, who consumed him for so many years, who raised his kids without him, who refused to leave him, who willingly went into debt so he could earn straight, whose beautiful eyes flashed rage when he wouldn't quit the club, died, with her eyes still open, because of the club. Because of Stahl.

Stahl knew the game and hung the noose around his neck. Clay and Tig were doing what they do best, protecting the club. Opie's been in that position before. He's strung men up. He's protected the club. He's enforced. He's no better than them. But when he wakes up with her taste on his tongue and his ears straining to catch an echo of her voice, he's not sure he can fall in line with the club's sense of justice, because she was his wife –_his fucking wife_- and club business got really fucking personal for the Winston family. Clay and Tig will probably always be looking over their shoulders, waiting for him to snap. Maybe they should. It'll be good to have them out of the picture for awhile. Give Opie a little time to think.

He's never killed a woman before. Never so much as raised a hand to one. Never even wanted to. Not Donna when she was furious and hollering about all the ways he let her down and not Lyla when she decided to blow a dude at Lin's restaurant.

Opie knows he's a big guy. He has big hands and any bruises he laid on Donna were from him pulling her up on his body, her back hitting a doorframe as they tried to make it into the bedroom, or her thigh smacking against the edge of the kitchen counter, and she was way too turned on to even feel them until later. Still, he didn't like to mark her. Told her it made him feel like a douche bag to see his fingerprints on her. Was extra gentle with her for a few days until they got caught up again and started ripping off each other's clothes.

Lyla is both easier and harder than Donna. She's mellower, less spunky, less inclined to care about club business. But she also expects him to stay the fuck out of her life and Opie has no idea how to do that, how not to care about the other men. Lyla doesn't want him to take care of her, and Opie's trying, but it goes against his nature and he doesn't know how to stop. Lyla likes when he bruises her during sex, bucks her hips against him and tells him to squeeze her harder. And well, he's learning to be okay with that, with the loss of control.

Stahl cried the way she did before. All of her swagger falling away as she lost the upper hand. He doesn't think he's ever met anybody as confident as Stahl, except maybe Jax, which is why he was the one roping her in, herding her, distracting her so she wouldn't see Opie waiting for her at the finish. Then as her future narrowed to the barrel of his gun, she begged. She pleaded for mercy, his mercy when she'd shown she was incapable of it. She shot her own partner to concrete the deal, Jax told him before they rode out for Jimmy. Her loyalty extended as far as the reach of her fingertips. She was a snake and yet she wanted his mercy... again. And Opie found, as he stared at the back of her head, he had none left. Not for her.

Kozik's banging on the window. They need to get out of here. Kozik's a good Sergeant at Arms, he knows what he's doing, but they didn't need him here to enforce. They needed somebody with a little distance to keep an eye on the greater picture because for Chibs and himself this hit was anything but business.

Pulling a trigger isn't hard, but it sticks, it's irreversible. It's just the squeeze of a finger, a few pops, some broken glass, and hot metal ripping through her world, ending it. When he wakes up tomorrow, Donna will still be dead, but so will Stahl. And maybe then, after Opie's cleared the ghosts out of his head, he'll be able to breathe.


End file.
